Three Easy Ways to Praise Your Business

You Owe It To Your Company To Promote!

My friend Lynne Meredith Golodner, a prolific, thoughtful writer who also happens to be a terrific PR chick, wrote a post about praise, and how much easier it is to punish ourselves than to praise ourselves.

Image by Howard Lake

After Lynne’s post, I decided when I write in my work diary, I’m going to praise myself for something based on that day’s work. I usually spend most of my word allotment on the “One to grow on” section, when I decide how to do something better. I’m going to balance that out.

I was thinking about how often we as small business owners are the same way about our businesses – we are reluctant to praise our business success to ourselves, let alone share it with others. There are those business owners who are great at self-promotion. They’re confident and savvy, and share their talents and successes with a wide and public audience. They come by it naturally, or they hire talented public relations folks to tell their story.

That’s a mistake. You owe it to your business to promote! It needs to be part of your strategic growth. I know, not everyone can afford a PR person. And yes, you’re already working 60 hours a week, and this is just not a priority. Well, it needs to be. Promoting your business is an opportunity to tell your story exactly how you want it to be told, to share the most important pieces to the folks you’d like to have as customers.

So how do you do it? Let’s think about easy ways you can praise your company publicly.

Next time you have a conversation with a regular customer, ask for a testimonial. Ask them to email to you or tell you why they like doing business with you. Have them approve it for all these places: Put it on your website. Add it to your brochure and newsletter. Post it on your Facebook page.

Next time you land a new customer, write a paragraph and send it to the local business paper, your daily and weekly newspapers, and post it on your website. Put it in your newsletter. Yes, Facebook, too.

Where are you a member? Ask your professional society chapter, newcomers club, chamber, small business group, women’s club (you get the idea) if you can come and do a presentation. Take your best business habits and capitalize:

Three ways to organize your office

Three ways to handle unhappy customers

Three ways to improve your website’s internet search.

Turn it into a blog post for your website. Put it in your newsletter. Facebook. Again.

Do you have other ways to praise your business? Tell me your tips! Do you struggle with this idea? Let’s talk about it.